General self-efficacy level and health behaviours in women over the age of 45 years who have undergone osteoporosis treatment

Introduction: Contemporary people do not follow the civilisation development in every life domain, their lifestyle is not always healthy. Self-efficacy is the factor that plays an important role in undertaking actions towards struggling with the disease.

The aim of the study was to determine the relationship between the general self-efficacy level and health behaviours as well as chosen sociodemographic features in women over the age of 45 years who have undergone osteoporosis treatment.

Material and methods: The study comprised 151 women over the age of 45 years. The research was conducted in 2016 in health care centres in Lublin, a city in south-eastern Poland. The Generalised Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) by R. Schwarzer, M. Jerusalem and Z. Juczyński and an original questionnaire were used as research tools. The obtained material was subjected to descriptive and statistical analysis. 2 test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Mann-Whitney Test and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient were all applied.

Results: The analysis of obtained results showed that as much as 73.5% of the respondents showed very low and low generalised self-efficacy level. On the other hand, only 22.5% of the examined were characterised by high and very high generalised self-efficacy level. The longer the duration of osteoporosis treatment (rho = 0.251; p = 0.002) and the better the self-estimation of health status (rho = 0.473; p = 0.000), the higher the respondents’ generalised self-efficacy level. The women’s self-efficacy level declined with increasing ailments (rho = –0.190; p = 0.019).

Conclusions: The generalized self-efficacy level and the health behaviours are not satisfactory.